


Barbarians

by Cerusee



Series: the loose ends will make knots [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: (don't worry it's just an OC), Damian is not handling his PTSD very well, Gen, I feel at this point I should point out when that is the case, Red Hood Jason, aftermath of Robin Rises, it's all fun and games until someone loses a limb, just erring on the side of caution with the tags, the graphic violence isn't THAT graphic, this is DC after all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 19:04:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14837420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: In the aftermath of Robin Rises, Damian mourns one brother, and finds common cause with another.





	1. Out of the Grave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LananiA3O](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/gifts).



> This was written for a prompt from LananiA3O, after she took me up on my dare to include the coprophagiac tendencies of dogs in [that chapter of Ill Weeds Grow Apace](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8437021/chapters/31765704) where Jason gets a puppy.
> 
> "Ok. Dare prompt time again. I promised this one would hurt. Would you kindly write a fic in which Damian (and potentially the other kids + Alfred too) find out about how Bruce took Jason to Ehtiopia to trigger his memories of his death and find a way to bring then dead Damian back to life, and either call Bruce out on it or reach out to Jason? This was in Batman & Robin Vol 2 #20. I know New52 is not your wheelhouse, but fix-its are, and I think this one we all need. Please?"
> 
> I don't know how much of a fix-it this one ended up being, really...

Todd had been there by Father’s side. Damian was sure of it.

Pennyworth had been there. And Drake and Gordon, and Stone. Todd, too.

Not…

All he could remember was the pain that ripped through his chest, and then falling back into blackness.

And then _warmth_ , and his father’s arms tight around him. Everyone was so upset; everyone seemed so relieved. It was bewildering, how happy people seemed to be, looking down to see him. It was as if the whole world had moved, from one moment to the next, and he’d been there, and suddenly he was here.

***

Damian was in his bedroom, seeing what various things he could crush in his hands with his chaos crystal powers, when Drake, of all people, knocked on his door, and opened it without asking.

“Don’t worry, I’m not staying,” Drake said, bluntly, standing in the doorway. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m glad you’re alive.”

Damian didn’t even have a chance to sit up before Drake slammed the door shut.

***

A little while later, there was another, less urgent knock. “Damian?” He could hear Gordon’s voice. “I’m heading out, and I’d really like to see you before I go.”

Damian opened the door, and looked up at her. Barbara Gordon was tall for a woman. She was looking down over him, lean and confident, her auburn hair trailing over her shoulders—and for a moment, he imagined it darker. “What do you want?” he asked.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said. “I imagine this has been pretty intense for you. Do you...remember anything?”

Damian took a few moments to think about it. “There’s not very much,” he said, simply. “And my father is here for me. Thank you for asking.”

She held his eyes for longer than he was comfortable with, and then she nodded and left.

***

“Father,” Damian said, slipping down into the seat next to Bruce, down in the Cave. “I haven’t seen Richard, yet.”

His father grunted.

“Is he unwell?”

Bruce didn’t answer, and something sick and sour started to rise up in Damian’s gut. “Father, please. Please tell me.”

“He’s dead,” Drake said sharply, from behind him. Damian hadn’t even realized Drake was there.

“ _No,_ ” Damian said. How could Drake pretend—Damian knew he’d been awful to him, but how could he say that, even in jest?

“Dick is dead,” Drake said. “There was a machine—”. He broke off. “Go ahead and grill Bruce for the details. He was the one who was there, and he won’t tell any of _us_ about it.”

Bruce flinched. Damian stood up, not meaning to, and staggered some distance on numb feet.

He fell against a wall, cold and solid. “No,” Damian muttered. _No_. Richard Grayson couldn’t be gone. He had to exist. He had to. When the world had changed, when Damian had felt reality’s strictures shifting so violently underfoot, it been Richard Grayson, _Batman_ , who guided him through it. Richard Grayson, who’d taught him a new way of— _no_. He _couldn’t_ be gone.

He couldn’t be gone. 

Yes, Father was here, but Father wasn’t enough, Father wasn’t…

“I’m so sorry,” his father said, gravely.

***

It was several days later, before it occurred to Damian that Todd had also been there, and he alone had not come to wish Damian well.

***

Damian stood at the grave, still hollow and wanting.

Gordon’s hand was firm on his shoulder. It wasn’t unwelcome. 

It wasn’t the hand he ached to feel.

“We all miss him,” she said, gently. “All of us.”

Damian nodded fiercely, and ignored the tear that slipped from his eye. And the next one. And the ones that followed that.

“I really wish Dick could have been there with us, when Bruce was fighting so hard to bring you back,” Gordon said. “You know, he almost had the whole family there, and that’s something.”

A thought made its way to the surface of Damian’s mind. “Was Todd there as well?”

She seemed startled. “What do you mean?”

“Todd. Did he follow you all to Apokalips?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “You didn’t know that? He was there in the Cave when Bruce brought you back, Damian. We all were. We all wanted you back.”

Damian racked his brains, but the memory stayed vague and impressionistic. He _thought_ that Todd was there, but…. “He didn’t come to see me. To say goodbye, I mean,” Damian said, regally. “That’s all I meant. He was the only one who didn’t. I suppose he knew better than to think I cared to see him.”

Gordon gave him the strangest look, when she left.

***

He did at least know better than to ask Father about Todd directly, at this point. It was never anything _useful,_. Vague warnings to stay away from Todd; to not _be_ Todd; not to follow Todd’s example...Damian found the subject of Jason Todd to be entirely exhausting.

But he was irked, somehow, and so he went into Todd’s file, and gorged himself on all the details of his life. Nothing about it struck Damian as all that interesting until the final chapter of it—well, perhaps that was the _penultimate_ chapter of Todd’s life—and he noted the location. Ethiopia, the Magdala Valley. Apparently, that was where Todd’s pathetic life had reached its first end, yet another victim of a boring madman.

The Magdala Valley, though. Damian had seen that name, recently, hadn’t he?

He did a universal search on the computer, and there it was. 

Father was meticulous about details.

A note in Damian’s own file, that Father had escorted Jason Todd to the Magdala Valley, in order to see if the location triggered any useful recollections.

Damian stared at the screen for a long time.

He understood perfectly what the words there meant.

***

“Todd,” Damian said.

“Pipsqueak,” Todd said, blandly. Most of his body armor was lying in a heap next to him, and he was dangling his legs off the side of the roof.

“You were there,” Damian said. “When Father...when he brought me back.”

“Yeah, I was,” Todd said. “But if you have questions, ask Batgirl. She’s the one with the eidetic memory.”

“She could tell me you were there, if I asked her,” Damian said. “She couldn’t tell me what you were thinking, though.”

Jason laughed, lightly. “Who cares what I was thinking?”

“I wonder,” Damian said. “If Father did.”

All pretense of ease drained out of Jason in an instant. He swung his legs up off the roof edge and climbed upright. “Go home, Damian,” he said, his voice dark and harsh.

“Father took you to the place where you died,” Damian said, very quietly. “That wasn’t a coincidence, was it?”

Todd stared down at him. “ _No,_ ” he said, bleakly. “No, it wasn’t. He was so desperate to bring you back—he would have done _anything_. He would have sacrificed anything.” Todd’s voice broke. “He _did_.”

***

“Father?” Damian said.

“Yes, Damian?” Bruce was distracted, sifting through DNA results. Damian looked over his shoulder. Pages upon pages of genetic markers. This was a long and distracting road, and Father would be on it for many hours.

Damian wondered how often his father had done this sort of testing. Surely he’d done it for Damian. Secretly, where Damian didn’t have to see it.

He’d probably done it for Todd, too.

Father needed to be _sure_ , before he could commit himself. Damian understood that, and he agreed with it.

“Never mind,” he said. “Please continue.”

***

He went to his own grave, still grossly empty, next to his mother’s, just the same. Except that Father has knocked down Damian’s gravestone, and left Talia’s intact.

***

“I’d like to see him,” Damian said, crisply.

Father was utterly still.

“Father,” Damian said, struggling to hold onto that affect, “Richard was my _partner_. I wish to pay him my respects.”

Now Father rose, great and dark and tall. Damian wasn’t intimidated; he’d seen taller. Even if it was… _Father_.

“We can go tomorrow,” he said, in a voice like broken asphalt.

***

Whatever Damian had hoped to find, gazing now at his erstwhile partner’s memorial...he hadn’t found it.

 _You’re not there_ , he thought helplessly. You can’t be. I need you.

There were actual tears running down his face and this was _humiliating_. He was crying. At least no one was around to see it.

And when his tears finally slowed, there was no one there to see that, either.

***

He was surprised, when the nightmares started to come. Sometimes he remembered them when he woke, dreams of the sword plowing through his chest—sometimes it was the Heretic, sometimes it was his mother who held the blade (not the hilt, but the blade, and his blood ran down it, dripped over her hands, mingling with hers, as she heaved him up over her). Sometimes, he didn’t, and he only knew he’d had one because he awoke shivering and soaked with sweat, wracked by a passing sense of terror. He wished so badly Richard was here, shepherding him into an embrace. He wished…

He wished his mother was still alive. 

Even after everything.


	2. In the Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A gang fight goes wrong.

It was a routine patrol through Park Row that brought Batman and Robin to the scene of a sprawling, chaotic gang fight, where the Red Hood was already on the scene, breaking arms, legs, and the odd skull with a hammer-like intensity. What he lacked in elegance, he more than made up for in efficacy; the men that the Red Hood put down did not get back up again. Damian could see traces of Batman in his movements, and Nightwing, too—remnants of his time as Robin, perhaps—as well as evidence of his extensive League training. Damian would never have admitted it out loud, but it was an intriguing mix of styles, and even interesting to watch. But watching was not what they were there to do, so he leapt into the fight himself, Batman at his side.

The Red Hood probably didn’t need the assistance, but that didn’t stop them from stepping in to provide it, and the Hood didn’t discourage them. The fight went quickly and smoothly, for the most part, and all but a few of the participants were out of it, when Batman shouted a warning to Robin. Damian whirled, and saw a bowie knife—probably aimed at his back, before he turned—driving straight towards his gut. 

He acted without thought. One flash of his sword, and the knife—and the hand that held it—went flying, as its owner screamed, and then stared in horrified shock at the bleeding stump of his wrist. 

Damian froze, his sword arm still held high. Blood slid down the length of the steel blade, multiple rivulets of it, pooling at the hilt, and dripping down over Damian’s gauntleted hand. The man that Damian had just mutilated groaned and slumped to his knees, clutching at his severed limb.

Blood, sliding down the blade...

“ _ROBIN!_ ” Batman roared, all but flying across the street, dropping the man he’d been occupied punching in the face onto the sidewalk behind him. Damian dazedly noticed that the man still seemed conscious as he fell, and he thought, _Father, no, you mustn't leave him like that_. If he was, though, he had the good sense to stay on the ground. “What did you _do?_ ”

“I—I didn’t mean to—” Damian stammered. Things had gone very suddenly and horribly out of control.

Batman dropped to his knees in front of the man, who was now weeping hysterically, and pulled a length of cloth out of his utility belt. “Robin, get his hand. If we can get him to the hospital quickly enough, they may be able to reattach it.”

Damian didn’t move. He didn’t think he could.

The Red Hood finished up the fight by slamming the last man standing’s head into a brick wall, and then casually sauntered over to where the severed hand lay, still clutching the bowie. “ _Nice_ ,” he said, picking up hand and knife together and prying the fingers off the handle. He tossed the hand over towards Batman. It bounced along the ground, coming to rest gently against Batman’s ankle. He tossed the knife into a nearby alley, well away from any of the unconscious gangbangers.

Damian wasn’t sure if the Hood was referring to the knife or to the extremity of Damian’s action.

“What the _hell_ were you thinking?” Batman fumed, as he tied a tourniquet around the wrist that was still spurting blood all over the street. “You didn’t need to do this to disarm him—”

The Red Hood made a choking sound that sounded suspiciously like suppressed laughter.

“This isn’t funny,” Batman snapped.

“If you say so, B,” the Hood said, not sounding chastened in the least. “Look, if you wanna take this guy to the hospital in the car, Robin and I can hang around here until the cops show up to take these assholes in. You better make the call, though; you know they won’t come to Crime Alley otherwise.”

“Fine,” Batman said, still clearly furious. He looked hard at Damian. “We’re going to talk about this later.”

“Hey,” the Hood said as Batman turned to go, hefting Damian’s victim over his shoulder. “Batman. Thanks for giving me a hand here.”

Batman snarled, but didn’t turn around.

***

The Red Hood melted back into an alleyway just before the police cars turned onto the street, alarms blaring, leaving Damian to do all the talking. As Batman’s partner, Robin had the nominal trust of the GCPD, but the Red Hood was still a wanted man.

As soon as the last of the police cars were finally gone, the Hood came thumping back down the alley’s fire escape, casually leaping down the last fifteen feet to land in a graceful crouch. He surveyed what was left of the crime scene, including all the blood, and then he kicked the bowie knife out from the alley where it had been left, overlooked. “ _Unbelievable_ ,” he said, in clear disgust. “Yeah, just leave a giant fucking piece of evidence at the fucking crime scene. _Amateurs_.” The Hood picked the knife up. “Well, if the fuzz doesn’t want this sweet-ass knife for the prints, I’m keeping it.”

“Do as you please,” Damian said, feeling hollow. He had a feeling the next time Father saw him, he was going to shout. A lot. The thought of trying to explain himself made him strangely nauseous.

He closed his eyes and wished yet again that Richard was here. He wished it had been Richard in the suit, not Father. Richard wouldn’t shout.

But—maybe he would. Damian wasn’t sure Richard could actually understand what Damian had done any better than Father could.

“ _So_. Shortstuff,” the Red Hood said. “Want to explain what that was all about?”

“He had a knife,” Damian said, knowing how hopelessly inadequate that was as an explanation.

“‘Of _course_ he had a knife,’” the Hood said, dramatically. “‘He _always_ has a knife, we _all_ have knives!’”

Damian stared at him. “What?”

“A smidgen of the offerings of Western literature,” the Hood said, lightly. “Never mind. Look. We both know there’s a dozen things you could have done to get that knife away from that guy that didn’t involve taking his hand along with it. You don’t do that anymore; Batman wouldn’t stand for it. Neither would Nightwing. What gives?”

“I find it hard to believe that _you_ of all people would care whether some drug-peddling gangster ends up maimed in a street fight,” Damian snapped.

“Oh, _that_ fucker?,” the Hood said. “He’s not a pusher. He’s an _enforcer_. He’s murdered at least three people _that I know of_ , all from here. People who didn’t pay, or whose bosses didn’t pay. One of them was your age, you know. He was a busboy, working under the table for his grandmother, and that sack of shit whose hand you just cut off cornered him in an alley and he cut Mani up so badly they had to bury him with the lid down. So you’re right that I don’t care about him. If he bleeds out—or even if he just loses that hand for good—small business owners up and down the whole of Crime Alley are gonna breathe a tiny sigh of relief. But I do care about _you_ , and I know that’s not who you are. Not anymore.”

“ _Why?_ ” Damian spat. “Why would you care about me?”

“You know, that’s a really good question,” the Hood said thoughtfully. “We should talk it out.” And without further preamble, he stooped and grabbed Damian, his left arm cinching like a steel bar around Damian’s chest and arms so that Damian could only squirm and kick. With his free hand, Todd fired his grapple upward. “Let’s go.”

***

The rooftop that Todd finally dumped them off on was boring. It was a building, it was square, and there was a roof entrance. Damian was probably sure he could leap off of this one in at least three directions without even a grapple, and still make it intact.

“Unhand me, Todd!”

“Really? You sure? It didn't look fun for Lorca, down there,” Todd said, even as he released Damian.

Damian felt a wild surge of sympathy with Father’s frustrations about… _everything_. Especially Jason Todd.

“So,” Todd said, casually prodding Damian’s shoulder. “ _You’re_ sure as shit not okay.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Damian snapped. “It’s not your business how I feel.”

“I know more than you think, and you just cut a dude’s hand off on _my_ op. Which you and Batman crashed. Whatever I think about that, this is my business, Robin.”

“Is that why you brought me here, Hood? Just to _berate_ me? When you’ve done so much worse than I have done?”

The Red Hood stood. Damian sometimes forgot how tall Todd was, as tall as Father. “Have I?” he said, mildly. “I wonder about that. I’ve killed a lot of people, Ibn al Xu'ffasch, but there’s not a one I look back on and wonder whether I made the right choice there. Can you say the same?”

Damian couldn’t. So many times, he’d been offered a throat and told to cut it, without having the slightest reason why. And he’d _done_ it. 

Every time.

Damian shook his head violently. He stripped off his bloody gauntlets, and stared at them blindly for a moment, then threw them over the edge of the roof.

“ _Whoa_ ,” Todd said. “Robin, what the hell—” Todd released the catches on his helmet, and stripped it off, while he sank down in a crouch in front of Damian. He tossed the bright red helmet to the side, heedless of how it scuffed and caught along the cement rooftop. He was bare-faced tonight, and he reached up a hand to touch Damian’s. Damian hated it, hated it, but he didn’t want to move, even if Jason’s calloused hand caressing his cheek wasn’t—

“It’s different for everyone,” Jason said gently. “But there’s a lot that’s the same. Are you having nightmares?”

Damian nodded, sharply. 

“Has anything like _this_ happened before?”

He closed his eyes. “I’m not sure.”

“I know what that’s like, too,” Jason said. “Not being sure.” He sat down on the rooftop in front of Damian, cross-legged, and Damian copied him without really thinking about it.

“When I came back, I thought everything was fine,” Damian said, eventually. “It was no worse than...a difficult fight. Coming back and finding that Richard was— _gone_ —it made the other thing seem as if it hadn’t mattered.”

“It mattered,” Jason said, softy. “It mattered to everyone, Damian. It matters to all of us. It matters to you.”

“I’ve been having dreams,” Damian blurted. “They don’t make any sense. It’s horrible things that I don’t want to see, but I keep seeing them, over and over. Sometimes I see them when I’m awake, now, too.”

“Did you see something tonight?”

“No,” Damian said. He closed his eyes, and tried to remember what he’d barely even felt. “There was just...a knife.”

“Right,” Jason said. He tipped his head back into the ten-story breeze. “Someone tried to stab you with a big-ass knife, and you had a bad reaction. It’s been, what, a month, for you? I can’t believe you’re even walking and talking, much less line-jumping with the Big Guy. It’s okay, Dames. This isn’t something you get over in just a few weeks. Batman is gonna be mad at you, sure, but he _doesn’t know_. Batman isn’t always right.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?” Jason asked, with one eyebrow crooked.

“The Magdala Valley,” Damian said, quietly. He was prepared for Jason to leap up in fury again, but instead, Jason just stayed sitting where he was.

Jason looked away, though. He inhaled deeply, and then sighed. “He’s an asshole,” Jason said, heatlessly. “We’ve been round and round so many times, we’ve...I’ve been an asshole, I’ve done things no one should forgive me for. And _he’s_ done…oh fuck. I _can’t_ —” Jason stood up abruptly, and strode to the other end of the roof, picking up his discarded helmet along the way.

“Todd?” Damian said. Jason was standing, staring somewhere vaguely south. “I didn’t understand, before,” Damian said, scrambling to his feet, and following Jason to the other side of the roof. “I thought I did, but I didn’t.”

“How much you wish you could forget?” Jason said, and why hadn’t Damian seen how much Jason was _bleeding_ , until now, when he himself was a stream, a river, an ocean’s tide—

“He did that to you,” Damian choked. “He made you remember things you wanted to forget forever, he did that to you, for _me_ —”

“He loves you, kid,” Jason said softly, cupping the back of Damian’s skull with a warm hand, but he was still staring south. “Look at how hard your dad fought to bring you back—he was fucking _crazy_ for awhile there. I wasn’t the only one he bulldozed to get you back. You’re Bruce’s _son_. The rest of us?” Jason made a face. “We were just his sidekicks.”

Damian made a disapproving noise.

Jason gently squeezed Damian’s shoulder. “You’ve got my number. _Call me_ , okay? Tonight, maybe, when Bruce is done yelling and not getting what’s going on. I’m not Dick, but I know shit Dick never knew, and I do know how to listen.” 

Damian nodded, stiffly.

Jason cast a line, and threw himself into it. “AND DON’T CUT OFF...” he hollered over his shoulder.

The wind swallowed the rest of what Jason had to say. Damian felt that in this exact and specific case, that wasn’t much of a loss.

His comm crackled. “ _Robin, return to base,”_ Batman directed.

“Acknowledged,” Damian replied, curtly. The remainder of this night was going to be awful.

Nothing was all right. No one was all right. Not one of them.

_We all have knives!_

Damian shivered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For context: Jason is quoting from the play [_The Lion In Winter_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lion_in_Winter), which is about King Henry II, his wife, Eleanor of Acquitaine, and their scheming asshole kids (who include Richard the Lionheart and Prince John, of Robin Hood legend). There is a [lovely film adaptation](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063227/) starring Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn, and a young Anthony Hopkins, which I highly recommend.
> 
> **John:** A knife! He's got a knife!
> 
> **Eleanor of Aquitaine:** Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it.


End file.
